


Onward and Upward

by nimmieamee (orphan_account)



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, Veronica-as-Richard-Campbell-Gansey-III
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 03:02:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9579575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/nimmieamee
Summary: Veronica is looking for a king who might give her a royal favor, and yet she can’t come up with a single thing she wants besides Betty’s company.





	

Veronica wasn’t going to use the favor to get the money back. Lodge women didn’t need dead Welsh kings to survive, and so the money wasn’t her first thought. Her first thought was:

_What if I got people to see I could be better._

But this was a Hiram Lodge sentiment, buying hearts coolly with a flash of higher power. Money. Magic. To Veronica, ancient kings and long-venerated stories had always promised just what boardrooms and checkbooks promised to her father. Fulfillment. A purpose. 

So while Hiram had schemed away millions, Veronica had schemed more quietly, but no less ardently. It was just that her secret involved the promise of Glendower: once a Welsh king, now (her sources told her) slumbering away somewhere on the Eastern seaboard, waiting for someone to wake him and gain his royal favor. 

He was, specifically, supposed to be somewhere near Riverdale. Her mother’s hometown. Sleepy and small and mist-shrouded, yes. But there was a wind singing in the pines the night they drove in, and the next morning a scarlet sunrise. And in the tree-lined, neat streets, Veronica thought she saw shadows far more elusive than any she’d ever seen in New York.

She was going to have to stay here, but maybe this was exactly where Spence’s ice queen should be. At Spence, she’d had to hide that she cared about something like Glendower. Here, she felt free and open enough to come out with it to just about anyone.

“Dead, but he can wake up?” Archie Andrews said. Some shade of unease colored his laugh, and for a second his arm brushed hers. It felt cold. Their preferred Pop’s booth was just below the air conditioning vent.

Betty Cooper, across the booth, looked serious. But then Betty rarely looked light, or at least as light as Veronica thought she should look. Betty was a World War II soldier’s sweetheart. She was all shades of cream and sand: creamy blouse, butter-yellow skirt, golden ribbon in her sandy hair. When Veronica had first laid eyes on her she’d felt a sense of deep satisfaction, like she was looking at a picture postcard.

But there was a faint, sincere frown that crept out of her at the oddest moments. Like now.

“What would you ask for?” she asked Veronica. “If you got the favor, I mean.”

Not to have people think she was better. Not even to _be_ better, really.

Because that was the magic of Glendower: you couldn’t find him unless you already were better, Veronica thought. A Spence girl couldn’t find him. A society queen, collected at parties and savage below the surface – she couldn’t find him.

If magic was to mean anything, then it had to be earned. First, Veronica had to – to become something incredible. Then she could find Glendower. Would find Glendower. And then –

She wouldn’t even need the favor.

“Well, that’s getting ahead of ourselves,” Veronica said now, folding her hands in front of her on the table and inspecting her manicure. She had her mother’s hands, not her father’s, and that pleased her. “I don’t even know what I want for breakfast. It’s about the journey. And the people you take it with. Which is why you’re coming with me tomorrow to look for Glendower.”

“Oh I am, am I?” Betty said.

“Archie can come too,” Veronica allowed, because Betty did have those feelings for him. When Betty talked about him, the sincere frown vanished and in its place was raw sunshine. 

Veronica couldn’t have enjoyed the loveliness of _that_ more if she’d had millions of dollars and several billion royal favors.

**Author's Note:**

> TRC fusion! I might write more in this universe, as the spirit moves me.


End file.
